I had written earlier about Marie Kondo’s book – Book Review #1/50 – The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying and how I had de-cluttered my sarees. We continued with the de-cluttering exercise and first de-cluttered Krishnan’s suits, shirts, pants and ties. Had the same experience as with the sarees, in that, we found shirts that were favourites but hadn’t been worn in years and pants that were most comfortable but hidden behind some other stuff. The suits were a revelation too ! I don’t know how others store their suits but Krishnan and I had hung up all the suits with their covers on – a mistake because you never see the suit …. how will you know if you want to wear it?
Now all the suits and pants that bring “joy” to Krishnan are hung in the wardrobe, minus their covers. All the covers have gone to Goonj so that they can be reused. The ties that bring “joy” are nicely rolled up and visible so he can pull anyone of them to use at anytime. The shirts for the time being are stored in cardboard carts, but I will find slightly deeper ones to store more of them.
The best part of the KonMari method is you get to see all the clothes that you own in one place and they are only those clothes that bring joy so opening the wardrobe makes you feel happy. I have worn sarees that I hadn’t “seen” in years because they were lying somewhere in the back and Krishnan has already worn a couple of his suits for different meetings and a few of his pants that had been lying hidden.
We are both avid readers and have a huge library. Last year we had given away nearly 800 books, mostly fiction to two libraries in Gurgaon, one inside our condominium complex and the other an online library called “library@home”. We still had/have hundreds of books, so after the clothes, we got onto the books.
The libraries that I had handed over the books to last time weren’t taking them so I started searching for a good place to give the books to. Most of the books we had were now self help and management books besides our collection of Osho’s books that aren’t going anywhere. I found this website called “https://mypustak.com” through Quora and called them up. They are a unique kind of NGO – you can donate your books to them and they put them up on their website, and anyone wanting to buy those books gets it almost free of cost, by just paying the shipping cost. You can choose to pay the shipping cost as you donate the books or not. The courier they use for pick up is Fedex and that whole process was a little painful but once they got to us, My Pustak’s process worked really well. We had packed about 253 books into cartons and My Pustak sent us the shipping tags. Fedex picked the books up and within 7 days, My Pustak website showed all the books that were accepted (200) with my name in the donors list.
We haven’t completed the de-cluttering of books as we find it difficult to give them away :):), but in the next round, we should be done with it. Am sure we will have another 300 odd books to give away and a similar number of Harvard Business Review magazine. Krishnan is unable to bring himself to give those away but I know he will because now everything is available online. As we collected all the books in one place, the way Marie Kondo suggests, we realised that we have two or more copies of the same book besides a kindle copy. What a waste of space and money…. We would never stop reading, and every penny invested into a book is worth it but no point in just buying several copies of the same book, unless we planned to give them away. Ofcourse, now we will.
The best part of de-cluttering the KonMari way is how circumspect you become before buying anything … earlier, if I was browsing an online saree store, I would most often end up asking the price for something and then get tempted to buy it. That has reduced significantly because I feel happy everyday as I see and wear my collection. The other thing is – putting things back in their place has become such a habit that our wardrobes are no longer cluttered.
Infact between the clothes and books, I also de-cluttered the Kitchen and its a much happier place to be in. There is still some way to go, but the space is a much happier one. Today I de-cluttered our work table … it was full of things and I just couldn’t write sitting on it. I would keep sitting in the living room and block Mom from seeing her Gods on TV and Krishnan would take his calls from this room and it bothered everyone. I kept telling Krishnan that I am unable to write sitting on this table. The impact of de-cluttering is that I have written this blog sitting at this table and there is a lot of creative energy in this space.
Krishnan and I plan on making de-cluttering a part of our coaching practice because the results are truly great – the space changes, the energy changes and you feel happier – what else do you need ?!
De-clutter and fill your life with joy.
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